VII 

 HISTORY OF THE PINK 



THAT it would be rash to conclude the word " Pink," as 

 applied to a flower, is derived from a colour is clear from 

 the fact that no authority has ever assumed this to be the 

 case. Dr. Prior thought it to be a derivative from 

 " Pinksten " (Pentecost), meaning fifty days after, from 

 the season one species flowers. Older authorities have 

 traced the word to a Dutch source, " an eye," and when 

 an eye is mentioned by old writers, it must be understood 

 the very centre of the flower is not always referred to, but 

 rather a ring of another colour encircling the central spot. 

 Pink has yet other meanings, one of which Parkinson has 

 in his mind in describing a " Nectorin with a pincking 

 blossome," the petals in this sort being mere strips, such 

 as one sees in the deeply incised petals of Dianthus 

 plumariuS) and even more pronouncedly in those of D. 

 superbus, so that, without having recourse to the rather 

 far-fetched theory of Dr. Prior, one may choose either of 

 the other meanings a word indicative of a colour circle 

 near the centre of the flower, or one descriptive of 

 deeply fringed petals. One thing is absolutely without 

 doubt, that up to the end of the sixteenth century the 

 Pink was invariably a single flower, the larger single 

 Carnations, for instance, on account of not being double, 

 coming under that designation. In Tusser's list of flowers, 

 first published in 1573, "Pinks of all sorts" occur, and 

 in Lyte's " Niewe Herball" of 1578, a fairly lucid 

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